


dust and rattling bones

by sybil



Category: Longmire (TV)
Genre: Drabble Collection, I Don't Even Know, Multi
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-02-07
Updated: 2016-02-20
Packaged: 2018-05-18 17:29:09
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 935
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5936848
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sybil/pseuds/sybil
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A collection of drabbles and one-shots that pull from both the book series and the television series.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. at first light

When she closes her eyes she can see his face, snow falling on frost-chapped cheeks and getting lost in five o'clock scruff. He tells her to bring the inmate back, tells her that he isn’t going with her. There is no room to argue with a man like Walt Longmire because he has never been in the habit of compromising.

Every time she blinks she gets these terrible flashes.

His skin is blue, hat slumped over his eyes and she cannot see them. The mountain winds and snow consume his tall frame, and then it cuts to a vision of him cast in ice. 

Another body to bury, another long goodbye.

She doesn’t sleep and when Ferg gives her the news at first light she _swears_ she’s never seen a more beautiful sunrise.


	2. young bear & bruises

Walt digs the toe of his cowboy boot into the Wyoming dirt, twirling a piece of long grass between his index and thumb he pops it between his teeth. He is a quiet boy, always has been. One of those introspective types that people sometimes mistake for slowness of wit and only a handful of people know better than that. One of them is the dark-haired boy who strides in front of him, dark hair gleaming like a raven’s wing beneath the glare of the sun.

His name is Henry Standing Bear and he is Cheyenne.

Henry has grown up knowing poverty and desperation. The reservation is rife with men and women and their demons, some are most certainly the fault of the white man and some…well, Henry isn’t sure; he had been raised to believe that all the Whites were the same, money hungry and content in raping the earth and giving nothing back. They relegate the shittiest land, the poorest of resources to the Red Man.

They are supposed to be all the same.

But Walt Longmire is not the same.

Henry had been set upon by some ignorant older boys and at first it was nothing he could not handle until he took a punch to the back of the head. He drops to the ground, too dazed to be angry and waits for the fists and feet. But they do not come because quiet Walt Longmire has interceded and even though his vision is still spotty at best he sees the spirit of Nonoma working through him, sees the Thunder Bird raging in usually placid blue eyes.

Later when Henry asks him why he had stepped in Walt would do something that Henry would come to recognize over the years. At first it would infuriate him and later he would become resigned to it. The sandy blonde boy shrugs his shoulders, tilts his hat back and looks up at the darkening clouds.

“It wasn’t right.”

His name is Walt Longmire and he is a white man.

But Henry sees his soul is red.


	3. morning reflections

The jagged teeth of the Big Horns dig into the normally Vistavision blue of the sky, and although it is a view Walt has looked at all his life he cannot recall a time when they appeared as menacing as they did now. Thunderheads loom, India ink continuously slashed to pieces by jagged strips of lightning as if to signify a storm of a different kind was looming on their immediate horizon.

“Walt? Whatcha doing?” Vic’s mouth is poised over the lip of her thermos, hazel eyes never subtle in expressing their concern.

“Thinking.” He took a deep breath, let it go and tore his gaze away from the glacier-carved masses.

She glares at him then, baring her teeth as a laugh laden with sarcasm drips from her mouth.  _ Watch it, cowboy.  _ Victoria Moretti had slowly come to realize there was a marked difference between the words ‘taciturn’ and ‘evasive.’ Both could easily apply to the man standing next to her.

Swallowing an acidic comment that just  _ begs  _ to be set free from the wicked curve of her tongue she allows her gaze to ascend to the mountains he had been so fixated on moments before. Eyes cut into a glare her free hand shoots out to touch his jacket clad elbow.

“Those damn mountains aren’t getting you a second time, now come on. I’m starving.”

 


	4. he who sheds his leg

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Vague spoilers for those of you who have not read the books.

Lucian Connally is not a good man.

He wasn’t a good man in his hey-day, guns ablazing and wild as the rolling hills that led into the mountains. He wasn’t a good man when he took another man’s wife to bed, kissed her senseless and took possession of her because there was an emptiness in him.

His diplomacy tactics were questionable at best, his cantankerous nature only seeming to worsen with the passage of the years. It’s gotten to be so that he almost doesn’t remember what it feels like to be a whole man and just when he thinks the memory is gone forever the ghost of the leg the Basquos took from him wiggles its toes to remind him.

He has excuses, wars tucked into the folds of his nightmares, shreds of a broken heart that had turned him into a hard man. Rarely does he employ them when facing the firing squad for his present misdeeds. Occasionally when he exits the retirement home like a vengeful ghost escaping its tomb he strays across a few old Cheyenne with silver in their hair and they greet him by his other name.

_ Nedon Nes Stigo.  _

Lucian Connally is not a good man, not much for fairplay, for red tape and nancy boy hand-holding--but his legacy (legend) endures. 

He just hopes his successor leaves a better one.


End file.
